Mother Teresas spirituality is in the limelight ten years after her death with the publication of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. This collection primarily of correspondence between Mother Teresa and priests who functioned as her confessors as well as some others shows an inner life of darkness for approximately 50 years. I was privileged to meet Mother Teresa in the 70s when she visited New Zealand. I visited her work in Calcutta in the 80s. The reaction of some to this book even to the point of describing her as hypocritical in my opinion misunderstands the spiritual journey.

Christian spirituality distinguishes between the Creator and Gods creation. Time, space, all we experience, ourselves, even our thoughts and feelings all these are created by God. They are creatures. Our feelings for God, our experiences of God are not God they are creatures.

Our idea of God is always too small. We tend to say God is like us only bigger. That is called the kataphatic tradition. God is powerful like us but more so: all powerful; loving all loving; present omnipresent; knowing all knowing, omniscient

There is another tradition, called the apophatic tradition: God is not like this, God is not like that. We rarely follow this apophatic tradition in the West, and find it more commonly in the East, including Eastern Orthodoxy. We do have a well-known Western hymn that includes it:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting

It is sadly not unexpected, then, in our kataphatically biased West to find people surprised that Mother Teresas experience was not of inner sensing delight, but of light inaccessible hid from our eyes. The tradition of Dark Night of the Soul is commonly misunderstood. It is a normal part of the journey from loving God for Gods gifts to loving God in Godself. And for many, Mother Teresa clearly included, it forms the normal landscape of their inner life.

There is, of course, unfortunately the danger that people of faith experiencing depression will misdiagnose this as the Dark Night of the Soul when, in fact, they need counseling or other help. But for many this current highlighting of the darkness of Mother Teresas inner life will help them to move beyond a search for spiritual experiences to a real journey into God.

Mother Teresas spirituality is in the limelight ten years after her death with the publication of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

Mother Teresas spirituality will highlight once again the value of commitment in a culture so often focused on feelings and experiences.

Bosco Peters is an Anglican priest with a deep interest in spirituality. He runs a website on liturgy spirituality worship